Your everyday emails could be your most valuable messages

You’ve spent hours crafting the perfect newsletter. You’ve obsessed over the subject line. You’ve tinkered endlessly with the layout. But when you eagerly check your stats the next morning, hoping to see thousands of engagements, are you too often disappointed?

While you focus all your energy on marketing, are you actually overlooking the most powerful emails you send every day?

I'm referring to your transactional emails. These are the everyday, routine, information-based messages that leave your outbox by the hundred. The quote confirmations. The order received notifications. The shipping updates.

Everyone sends them, but almost no one uses them properly.

Here's the reality. Your best open rates don’t come from your newsletters. A typical promotional email might achieve an open rate of around 30% if you’re doing well. But your transactional emails? They see open rates ranging from 60% to 90%.

The reason these open rates are so high is simple. The client is waiting for them. They need to know the price. They need to know the job has arrived safely, and they need to know it has been shipped. They are already listening, yet most print businesses just send a robotic, functional sentence. "Here is your quote." "Your job has shipped."

Are you wasting your highest-engagement emails on your most boring messages? If so, this is a huge missed opportunity.

How frustrating to have their full attention, yet not saying something more that could be of value to them and your business.

I see this a lot with my own clients, and it’s one of the first things I like to work on with them. Their marketing campaigns might be very slick and professional, but as soon as they get into the more transactional communications, the messages become dry and purely functional.

Make the most of messages you’re sending anyway

You need to stop viewing transactional emails as admin and start viewing them as marketing assets. You can easily turn a basic email into a value-packed source of opportunity with just one small tweak. You don't need to rewrite your entire system. You just need to add a little bit of purposeful and appropriate marketing that you can be confident will be seen.

This could be as simple as asking for a review and making it as easy as possible by providing the right links. When is a customer happiest? It isn't when they pay the invoice. It is when you tell them their goods are on the way. That shipping notification is the peak moment of excitement. That is exactly where you should be asking for a review. Don't send a separate email three days later that gets ignored. Add a simple line to your shipping template. "Excited to receive your print? We’d love it if you could share that feeling here."

Another excellent opportunity is your quote confirmation email. If someone has asked for a price for something simple, why not highlight the additional finishes and services you provide? Maybe include a guide on how to make the most of those products (e.g., leaflet distribution for a flyers order). This isn’t being pushy, it’s being helpful. You are presenting options they might not have thought of.

When a client places an order, their main concern is often whether they have done it correctly. Use your order acknowledgement email to reassure them. Include a link to a simple guide on "How to supply artwork correctly" or "What happens next in production." This eases their anxiety and reduces the number of phone calls your team needs to handle.

These emails are the workhorses of your business. They go out every day, automatically.
If you treat them as boring admin, you are leaving money and reputation on the table. But if you treat them as an opportunity to add value, you can turn a functional transaction into a positive and profitable relationship builder.

Start checking your templates today. You are already getting the open rates. Now you need to make them count.

Want to learn more? Book a discovery call with Colin here... https://calendly.com/theonlineprintcoach/30-min-discovery-call